The first difference to note, apart from the fact that Tiger Woods was at one event and not the other, is that one was played in a great centre of population and the other was staged out in the country.

Whereas there are almost 2,500 courses in Canada, and the combined population of Montreal and Toronto is about 8.5 million, there are only 440 courses in Ireland and a much smaller population. Crowds apart, the organisers of the Presidents Cup take great care to place the event in a community capable of doing justice to it. So the next match will be in San Francisco and the following in Melbourne. Both venues guarantee substantial corporate support without which modern professional golf just perishes.

This has always been the way. Professional golf has a voracious and insatiable appetite for hard cash with prize-money and organisational fees seeming to penetrate the clouds of sanity in every generation. The greed factor is thinly cloaked by donations to charity but there is no getting away from the fact that this is a money game.

Hopefully the 2009 match at The Heritage will prove a great success. Perhaps they will manage to crack the equation as Tom Kane appears to have managed on behalf of the Irish Open at Adare. They face a challenge. An impossible one unless they get the fullest cooperation of the organisers and the team captains. Ways must be found to have Irish players in the event. Without local interest an already at-risk event will simply founder.

Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus worked together in Canada. Player picked Mike Weir for his team and he and Nicklaus, and the two players concerned, kept in touch and all agreed to a Weir versus Woods match in the singles.

With the result of the match decided on Saturday night they all did what was necessary to provide entertainment on Sunday . . . Weir versus Woods. Woods told Nicklaus: "Cap, I'll play whoever you want me to. If this is what they want you to do I think it will be good for the matches, I'm all for it."

The galleries, who had little other than academic interest in the fate of South Africans, Australians and Argentines in any event, now had something to be passionate about and when the home player came out with guns blazing the place was abuzz. When the game went all the way to the 18th and Weir won it, it had to be acknowledged that the show was a belter.

Contrast all of that to Portlaoise where there was no Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell, Damien McGrane or Peter Lawrie. Who were the Irish galleries supposed to get excited about?

Quite apart from the missing Irish there was no Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter or Luke Donald. The second-division European Tour was represented by its own second division.

Surely Faldo and Ballesteros didn't think names like Marc Warren, Gregory Havret, Simon Dyson, Gonzalez Fernando-Castano, Phillip Archer, Markus Brier, Graeme Storm and Peter Hanson would set the turnstiles aglow? Fine players, no doubt, but not household names and none with a fanbase in Ireland. The captains botched it and showed no respect to the golfing public in the host country.

They also miscalculated the fact that Irish golfers have never been big spenders at the gate. The Ryder Cup apart . . . and that event does stand apart . . . promoters in Ireland have always given away lots of tickets to ensure a crowd. Carrolls did this at the Irish Open for years and others did likewise. Entry to the first days of the European Open were sponsored this year.

Which is not to suggest Irish fans are mean.

Just normal. Entry to the first three days at this week's Dunhill Cup in Scotland is free of charge (they will charge �15 for the final round today) and they are even operating a free shuttle bus service between the three host venues at St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns!

With a few exceptions, golf events are not big sellers compared to rugby or soccer and even suffers when staged opposite other big events. Only fools should try to attract the floating sporting public away from the Olympics, the World Cup or the Rugby World Cup. To a great extent it is the same people who support all the big events and golf will lose in a competitive situation. This lesson wasn't heeded at Portlaoise last week.

Other conflicts exist, too, but are never spoken of openly. Whereas the Presidents Cup is controlled by the PGA Tour and its confederates, the Seve Trophy is a much more commercial happening run by the Ballesteros company.

This means that rival management companies are non-supportive at best and they may be obstructive. For example, in an age when every player who has won an event is suddenly touted as a golf-course architect, it is difficult for Seve's rivals to show up at his Trophy on a course he designed and sit through celebrations which tout him as the best designer of them all!

This problem is set to continue through 2011 at least when the Seve Trophy may move to another Seve-designed course at The Shire London. This course opened three months ago at Barnet and will have two sister courses designed by Seve within the M25 radius, at Northolt and Edgware, by 2013. At least, they have corporate London to look at and a few years to work on golf politics.